What Makes My Heart Beat Faster

So I just got home after spending a terrific afternoon taking my neice, Morgan, and nephews, Drew and Jason, with my sister, Wendy, on one of those Crazy Aunty Amy shopping sprees, then to The Dairy Center for an art opening, then to great dinner at Zolo Grill, then taking Morgan home in Brad’s Mercedes SL55 AMG. I almost never drive Brad’s car since I have an incredible Mercedes CLK55 AMG of my very own, which Brad amazingly negotiated from Mercedes as a replacement for the one that caught on fire in our driveway, which made my heart beat fairly quickly at the time.

But what I’m talking about today is driving a rocket ship at 120 miles an hour on the new, empty tollway on the way home after dropping Morgan off, having driven her at a sedate 90-100 miles an hour. Brad’s car handles like a dream, incredibly smooth and responsive and exciting and FAST. I had Snow Patrol blasting and both hands on the steering wheel as the sun set behind the Rocky Mountains. I love to drive, like to think that I drive well, and would still be driving at a high rate of speed down the highway if I didn’t have a husband and dogs waiting at home. If you’re a friend of Brad’s, and you like to drive, definitely ask him if you can drive his rocket ship. Certainly makes my heart beat faster..

The Watershed School

My neice and nephew, Morgan and Drew, finished up their academic year this evening by giving Presentations of Learning at their school. Each student makes a 15 minute presentation explaining what they learned and assessing their own growth and learning throughout the year, both academically and personally. These presentations are open to the public and the students take questions at the end of their presentation. It’s incredible to listen to young people who are articulate and thoughtful and knowledgeable about themselves, their community, and the world around them. It gives my usually misanthropic critical self a rest and lets me be enthusiastic about the possibility of a better future. I kept thinking about the book I just read, Oh the Glory of it All, as I listened to these young people. It never ceases to amaze me how we cannot know the impact we can have on others, both postive and negative. Even though Morgan and Drew will likely return to public school next year, they both expressed gratitude for the genuine attention and respect they received from their teachers. I was a person who did well in public school (I’ve mentioned my gold-star seeking, goody two shoes, conformist behaviour before) and had some terrific, dedicated, life-changing teachers (hmm, you should go to college back East ("back East" apparently being a foreign country))– but I wish I had gone to The Watershed School. Congratulations to the students, teachers, staff, board, and supporters of the school!

From The Watershed website:

If you learn best through experience and engaging with the world around you…

If you are eager to take responsibility for your learning and to shape your own education…

If you are excited to work with other students from different cultures and backgrounds…

If you are willing to challenge yourself to go beyond what you thought was possible…

If you want to make a difference in your community…

If you are ready for the most extraordinary educational journey of your life…

…then we invite you to take a closer look at

The Watershed School

Oh the Glory of it All

I read two books this weekend/week, both memoirs about adolescence in America. I couldn’t put down Oh the Glory of it All, which is sad and funny and beautifully written in the cleverly self-conscious and ironic style that I think I first loved in Dave Eggers’ memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genuis and his first novel, You Shall Know our Velocity. And it does indeed turn out that Sean Wilsey, the author of Oh the Glory, is an editor at large at McSweeney’s Quarterly, and Dave Eggers wrote a blurb for the back cover. Small writing world?!?

Oh the Glory is another piece in an unsolvable puzzle about why some kids make it through adolescence and some kids don’t. Some of the most disheartening parts of the book are about him being shuttled from one boarding school to another until he fortunately gets to one where the people treat him like a person. It’s nice that Sean Wilsey made it down the long road out of his family and into the comparatively sane world of adulthood and wrote this book.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

Last Thursday night, coming home from Washington DC, driving through Eldorado Canyon State Park at dusk on the way to my house, I saw the first mountain lion I’ve ever seen. In fact, I saw two. And they were big, somehow much bigger than I had imagined them to be, and much scarier. The small lizard brain that says, "Be afraid, be very afraid," was speaking loudly. I saw them ahead of the car in the one lane dirt road that goes through the park, and then they climbed up an angled rock ledge on the left side of the road and were gone; so swift and graceful and eerie. According to the mountain lion entry in Wikipedia, "Adult males may be more than eight feet long (nose to tail), and weigh about 150 pounds (70 kg). In exceptional cases males may reach as much as 200 pounds. Adult females can be 7 ft (2 m) long and weigh about 75 pounds (35 kg)." I believe it. These are big, scary predators.

We’ve always known there are mountain lions in our neighborhood. My golden retrievers, Denali and Kenai, have brought home complete sets of deer forelegs and assorted other big and nasty dead deer bits that were obviously lion kill. The dogs are always so proud of themselves that they don’t really want to relinquish their trophies to me. In retrospect, I’ve been pretty complacent about letting the dogs run around at dusk. That’s definitely over now. My thinking was that with the two of them, one at 95 pounds and one at 115 pounds, they could look out for each other against a single big cat. But the "cats" I saw were definitely much larger than the dogs, there were two of them, and they just completely exude the "we’re at the top of our food chain" vibe. I think the only predator I’ve seen that’s even in the same class of scary as the mountain lion is the spotted hyenas I saw in Tanzania. Part of why hyenas are so scary is they look almost prehistoric with their blunt skulls and pack hunting behavior. They’re just plain ugly. The mountain lion is elegant and fierce and just plain scary. No more roaming around freely on our property at dusk for Denali and Kenai.

The Virgin Suicides

On Memorial Day weekend Brad and I usually sit outside with binoculars trying to spot early forest fires caused by careless barbecuing activity in Eldorado Canyon State Park which borders our property. Since we’ve had to evacuate for fire three times, once in the “just grab the family photos and the dogs and go” mode, it’s not just idle paranoia on our part. However, this weekend we’ve imported our weather from Seattle and have had steady drizzle, then heavy rain, then fog, then some more drizzle — so fire danger is low and we’re hunkered down inside watching movies. We’ve had the same three Netflix movies since before I left for Paris on the Ides of March, and decided to watch them. Netflix has definitely made money on us in the last 2 1/2 months. We watched The Skulls (which wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it would be, but just barely) and started Skulls 2 (guess which movies are Brad’s rentals?!?) before realizing after about 7 minutes that it was just like The Skulls and stopping. Then we watched The Virgin Suicides, which is Sofia Coppola’s first movie. I loved loved loved Lost in Translation and like to imagine it’s the kind of movie I’d make myself. It has some of the dreamy, episodic things I’m trying to do in my writing in The North Side of Trees. I had read The Virgin Suicides as part of my First Novels campaign, and hadn’t really loved the book — I liked its quirkiness, but felt there was a semi-misogynistic streak that repelled me. I hoped that Brad wouldn’t exert his veto power over Chick Flicks and that Sofia’s deft touch for dark and quirky was developed here. And indeed it was — very dark, indeed. I told Brad I could teach a Media Studies course called “The Other Side of the Picket Fence” that would start with American Beauty and Blue Velvet, and would definitely include The Virgin Suicides. Brad just kept saying, “Well, that was disturbing.” I love a disturbing movie.

The Interpreter v. Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith

Brad really wanted to go see Revenge of the Sith yesterday — without having seen Episodes I and II. I had seen Episodes I and II and thought they were both terrible, terrible movies. I’m no longer awed by great swaths of computer animation intended to distract from convoluted plot lines and negligible character development. According to the review in The New Yorker,

It is true that this sixth film marks an improvement upon the last two efforts, whose combined soullessness was enough to induce paralysis, but Lucas remains wedded to a hollow, antiseptic vision of other worlds, coupled with a determination to draw the glummest possible performance from otherwise talented actors….the suspicion remains that Lucas has left deep space a far shallower place than he found it.

So after some minor thumb wrestling (I even offered to go to The Interpreter while he went to Episode III), we went to see The Interpreter, which was powerful and thought provoking and will likely disappear in the tsunami that is Revenge of the Sith. The Interpreter stars Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn and is about international conspiracies and Africa and the wan hope that diplomacy can have impact. I don’t know whether my attention span is inversely proportional to my age, but all movies seem to last at least 15 minutes too long, and this one was no exception, even though it’s full of intrigue and suspense and the beautiful, effortless acting of two superb performers. It made me want to go back to Africa..

NCWIT

I went with Brad from Chicago to Washington DC for the launch event of the National Center for Women and Information Technology. Brad and I are both enormous advocates for women’s education and believe that women achieving parity in the information technology field is an important economic issue for all of America. We are delighted that our local congressman, Mark Udall, supports NCWIT and was able to spare some time to speak at the launch event. Congressman Udall has a tremendous memory. I thought the last time I had seen him was when our neighborhood evacuated for an out-of-control “controlled” burn that turned into a 60 acre forest fire last September and we were waiting at the Eldorado Market for information about when we’d have access to our house — but he accurately remembered our paths crossing at the Dulles airport in March as Brad and I transferred to a flight to Paris for my 6 week visit there. Tremendous memory for tiny details..

Best wishes to NCWIT with their mission to “ensure that women are fully represented in the influential world of information technology and computing.”

Old Friends

Apologies to my friends for calling them “old,” but after spending last weekend in Chicago with a slew of Brad’s MIT fraternity brothers and their families, I’m amazed that suddenly I’ve known so many people for 20 years, and amazed how many of us awkward, geeky/nerdy, bookworm people have turned out to be decent human beings. It was great to see people doing well while dealing with the usual life struggles (aging/ailing parents, divorce, parenting small children, career changes, etc), and nice to have the chance to just connect with friends. Thanks to Sameer and Balaji for initiating and organizing things. Let’s do this again next year —

Hats and Horses – The Kentucky Derby

One week ago I was in Louisville, Kentucky, fulfilling another lifelong dream by attending the Kentucky Derby. I think there are many ways of dividing the world into two kinds of people (e.g., the people who think there are two kinds of people, and the people who don’t), and a major bifurcation is between those who are horse people and those who aren’t. I’m definitely a horse person. I took dressage and equitation riding lessons with my niece, Morgan, and dream of having my own horse if my life wasn’t so nomadic. I’ve watched all of the Triple Crown on television for years, and have explored the possibility of doing a Triple Crown set of spring travels; so when the invitation came to go to The Derby, I immediately accepted. I had a terrific time, met some great people, lost my $20 on Bandini (finished 18th out of the field of 20), and got to wear two hats. What could be better?

I’ve posted all of my photos into my Kentucky Derby photo album, which still has its French command options. Instead of laboriously posting each photo into Type Pad, Windows had an option to post to the web, and then to post to Type Pad. I don’t know if this was some kind of strategic alliance between Six Apart and Microsoft, but I loved being able to upload 174 photos automagically. Go Type Pad!

Derby2005103

Derby2005026

Trumpets

The usual grueling international travel experience started off with a challenge at the Paris airport where the ticket agent said that miles hadn’t been pulled for my upgrade and I didn’t have enough miles left in my account to do it, and I would have to fly coach class even though I had a little piece of paper saying I was assigned to seat 8A. I don’t really mind traveling coach since I fit fine in the seats and I usually just read and sleep the entire time I’m on a plane. But on a 9 hour flight it’s really nice to be upgraded. I was really polite and spoke as much as possible in French and asked if maybe we could pull miles from my husband’s account. Oh, no, madame, that would be completely against the rules since he’s not here to witness and sign and you have no proof he even knows you and you don’t have his account number anyway. So then when I was able to rattle off Brad’s account number from memory, the agent actually laughed and said he’d see what he could do. And I did get to sit in seat 8A.

Getting from the plane to the customs checkpoint in Chicago must have been a mile long walk. It was at least 20 minutes at a brisk walking pace. Maybe you’re observed by Customs and Border Patrol the whole way to see if you look furtive or something. I was already exhausted, which was exacerbated by having to transfer my own 67 pound suitcase (just under the 70 pound international limit!) and my 56 pound suitcase and my roll-aboard and my laptop case through customs without my usual Brad sherpa companion. By the time I got onto my flight from Chicago to Denver I felt pretty shaky and sick from all the adrenaline and being awake for hours and hours. I’m not really at my best between say 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., which is what time it was in Paris. I even pulled my little air sickness bag out of the seat pocket and had it ready in case I didn’t make it, and then fell into a deep deep sleep as soon as my stomach calmed down. When the pilot announced that the snow had stopped falling in Denver and we would arrive early, I was really happy.

I went to baggage claim where Brad and I had agreed to meet, and he was looking for me in the wrong direction so I got to completely sneak up on him, which was fun. While we were hugging, I noticed that he was standing really close to someone else’s luggage, not a suitcase, but some kind of instrument case, which is when I finally saw the man with the trumpet, who proceeded to play a trumpet fanfare in my honor! Brad and I have an old, good joke between us, which is that when he’s working and I come into the room, I’d like a flourish of trumpets since I’m a human and therefore more important and interesting than the computer (a topic we continue to actively debate). So he sings a little trumpet call for me sometimes. And in celebration of my return home after being gone for six weeks, he arranged for a musician from the Boulder Philharmonic to come out to DIA and give me a real welcome. Pretty special, really thoughtful, and since I was one of the first people off the plane and scurried quickly to baggage claim, not many people saw/heard, which is just right for introverted me. Brad really puts energy into keeping the romance alive, after almost 15 years together. Thanks for the trumpets — I’m happy to be home.